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As
narrated by Mr. Ganor
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This
photo was taken in 1946 when I served as an
interpreter with the American forces in Germany.
I worked with a special unit of the CIC,
(Counter Intelligence Corp), known as Screening
Unit 11. Our job was to interrogate displaced
persons in DP camps.
Nazi collaborators and SS men from
Lithuania,Ukrain and Russia were hiding in those
camps pretending to be workers brought to
Germany as forced labor.
Many of these SS men were among the murder
squads that killed Jews in Europe. As I knew
Lithuanian, Russian and German my job was to
interrogate and find these Nazi
collaborators.
It was a hard but satisfying job as I managed to
find quite a few Nazis and expose them to the
American Forces Justice department.
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Exhibit
Source:
http://rongreene.com/sollyphotog4.html
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III. OPEN QUESTIONS ON SOLLY
GANOR
Let
it be known from the outset that we have been put on
notice by Mr. Ganor that any challenge on him would be
encountered with a stiff resistance that could result in
a lawsuit against us since, according to him, we started
tangling "with the wrong person."
Let also be known from the
outset that, as far as we are concerned, there is no
force on Earth (and beyond...) that could silence us of
not expressing our viewpoint --when we are being
confronted by important challenges to our work-- to any
of the complex issues involving the most sacred of all
sacred grounds that the Holocaust represents for us and
for many others. This very point has been made extremely
clear to Mr. Ganor in our reply email to him of
February 22, 2004 (Exhibit
2,
hereto).
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With this being said,
let us begin by noting that we have no direct
evidence of any sort on Solly Ganor and that
contrary to his expressed views, we are not the
"judge and jury" of anything. All the evidence
that we have are the "facts" as presented by
Mr. Ganor in his various postings and
representations.
Our opinion expressed
herein refuting Mr. Ganor's purported
"facts" is based on the massive indirect
evidence that exists which is being filtered
through our argument supplied.
Our formed opinion, for
what is worth, it is just that --our opinion
and nothing else. Because we stay away from
speculations, the only thing left in rendering
our opinion is our rational deductive reasoning
based on Mr. Ganor's supplied evidence
hereinbelow.
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1. We have no reason of doubting that Solly Ganor
(apparently born as Zalke Genkind or Jenkins) is not
in fact a Jew, although we have been wondering about the
title and the picture that he has chosen for his book
"Light One Candle" and, about the changing of
his first and last names.
  A).
You see, in the Jewish culture, tradition, and
rituals, simple candles (as illustrated in the
book cover picture at left) are not being used at all
in commemorating death --that being the practices of
other religions, most notably in the Christian
religion. There are no candle rituals in Jewish
cemeteries. Simple candles (that need not be confused
with the Jewish
Yahrzeit 'memorial'
Candles), in Jewish
tradition, by in large, are being used mostly as a
symbol of celebration such as welcoming the Sabbath or
as part of some other Jewish celebrations (most
notable the Hanukkah celebrations).
The Holocaust, on the other,
has nothing to do with a "welcoming" event or with a
"celebration" of some sort, and this is why we find
Mr. Ganor's book title (with its cover picture)
quite distasteful. With this being said, most
certainly, it is not for us to question the propriety
of Mr. Ganor's book title (or cover picture), but
we must admit that we have been surprised by it.
B).
Now, with respect to Mr. Ganor's adopted new
name --that is also a little bit peculiar.
You see, in the Eastern European Jewish tradition
and culture, the preservation of a "perpetual" first
name in a family is common practice and is being
achieved by giving to the first born boy the
grandfather's first name. A notable exception is for
the Jews that emigrated to Israel where many have
chosen to adopt a Hebrew name (to associate and
integrate better with their adopted new biblical
homeland). For instance, as an example, a Russian
first name "Ivan" could transform in Israel into
"Ilan" or a Jewish last name "Leb" could transform in
Israel into "Lev." In Mr. Ganor's case, his new
adopted first or last names do not appear to be Jewish
or Hebrew (but we, of course, could be wrong here).
The reason for Mr. Ganor adopting his new
identity is not clear at all to us.
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Why
Mr. Ganor has chosen to change his
identity remains an open question.
- A reference
about this rather mysterious change can be
found in page xvii of his book's Prologue
where it is stated:
"After I left Europe for Israel in 1948, I
adopted another identity. I seldom
let my guard down, seldom admitted that I
was a Holocaust survivor."
[sic!]
In fact, there is a distinct possibility
that in the early 90s Eric Saul made
Mr. Ganor a Holocaust Concentration
Camp survivor! as all our findings point
indeed towards that scenario. (Clearly, in
the larger and "technical" sense,
Mr. Ganor is a Holocaust
survivor.)***
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***Editor's
Note: This Editor, for the
purpose of our Sect. III, makes a
differentiation between those survivors
that have been imprisoned in the ghettos
and the concentration camps and
those that have not. This
Editor's view, which it is not being
shared by everyone, is that such a
distinction and demarcation needs to be
made for our Sect. III list that is
primarily dedicated to those unique
"graduates" that were part of the
monstrous "schools" build by the Nazis.
All Nazis' "undesirables" (Jews and
non-Jews alike) were indeed active
participants and "enrolled" into the
Nazis' grand "Course," but that "Course"
was "taught" far more intensely in their
"schools" than outside, and thus, the
Editor's demarcation among the two types
of "graduates." The barbed wire made the
physical (but most certainly not the
emotional) demarcation line between these
two groups of "graduates."
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- Another
reference, this time with
Mr. Ganor's "explanation" of the
changing of his last name from Genkind to
Ganor comes at page xix of his book's
Prologue where it is stated:
"I had changed my last name, as many
European Jews do when they return to
Israel. I chose
G a n n o r
[placed in Italics and spelled in his
book with two "n" --sic!] by looking
in the phone book. It was short, it
started with G, and there weren't
many Ganors in the book. Ganor means
"Garden of light." I was now Solly
Ganor."
[Still nowhere we could find an
"explanation" how, and for what purpose,
his original first name Zalke has
been transformed into
Solly !]
¶¶¶
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Some
young "graduates"
from Buchenwald
of Mr. Ganor's age at the
time
[Photo
credit: US National
Archives]
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2. We have had a hard time in determining Mr.
Ganor's true age because of the so many conflicting
inferences that can be drawn from the various
presentations that Mr. Ganor is putting out.
A).
In his current "Remembrance" webpage at
<www.rongreene.com/solly.html> it is stated:
"I am seventy-two years old now, among the
youngest survivors of the Holocaust." If that
representation is correct, then if we subtract from
the current year 2004 his represented age of 72, we
get that he was born in 1932. But since that webpage
of Mr. Ganor does not have a date when it was
created or updated, there is a distinct possibility
that the said page has been there for a while. Then,
the next question would revolve as to how old that
webpage could be. Well, on the same page, we see a
reference to a happening of April 9, 2002,
so we reasoned that the said webpage could not
possibly have been created prior to the referenced
date. With this reasoning, we came to the conclusion
that the said webpage was created on or after April 9,
2002, placing thus Mr. Ganor's year of birth to
1930. From these two scenarios, if follows that in
1939, Mr. Ganor was between
7 and 9.
B).
On the other hand, on the same website of
Mr. Ganor at its photos section at
<rongreene.com/sollyphotog.htm>, we encountered
another time table. Indeed, there we see at the bottom
of the page a picture (from Munich, Germany) of
Mr. Ganor referring as being 17 in 1946. That
pushes Mr. Ganor's birth year to 1929 and thus
putting him at age 10 in 1939.
C).
Finally, in another story placed on the same website
of Mr. Ganor at
<rongreene.com/jackson.html>, we see this lines
from his article "Hope in Times of Despair" dated
October 26, 2001, (see, Exhibit 4,
¶¶ 5 and 3, respectively):
" It was on Hanukah,
December 1939. I was eleven years old," and, in
another part,
"I am 73-year-old man who went through the
Holocaust and participated in five wars
against the Arabs in Israel."
[sic!, now five and not four wars!]
[Emphasis
supplied]
pushing thus his year of
birth even further to 1928. This birth year of 1928 is
also posted on his book's cover jacket where also it
is given his birthplace (Heydekrug,
Lithuania).
If this is a reflection of
Mr. Ganor's sloppiness, then watch out for any of
Mr. Ganor's purported facts. If this is not
sloppiness on Mr. Ganor's part, but it is something
else, our warning is the same:
watch out for Mr. Ganor's stated
"facts"!
3.
We respectfully do not find it credible and question
Mr. Ganor's assertion , that he as a little boy
growing up in Kaunas, Lithuania met the late Japanese
Vice-Consul Chiune Sugihara that became, as he put it "a
lighthouse of inspiration for me during my time in the
dark pit of the Holocaust." All this for us appears to be
a fictional representation due to a superb coaching by no
other than Eric Saul. [***An additional study on
this very subject has been placed herein.]
There is an undisputed fact that
the Japanese Vice-Consul Chiune Sugihara did nothing, but
absolutely nothing, to help Mr. Ganor's family
escape Lithuania as by Mr. Ganor's own account, he
spent the war years in ghettoes and concentration camps.
Yet, Mr. Ganor claims not only that he met
personally the Japanese Vice-Consul, but that meeting him
had become a lifelong "inspiration" for him!
[sic!] This nonsensical claim that borders to the
absurd is further magnified by Mr. Ganor's own
admission that he for some five (5) decades had blocked
out from his memory all his association with the war's
years and the Holocaust. All this of course changed, as
if by magic, upon meeting Mr. Saul in the early 90s!
Mr. Ganor's memory was back and, with the invaluable
coaching of Mr. Saul, an autobiographical book,
extraordinarily rich in detail, was born with not one
single document to support the hundreds and hundreds of
exact dialogs purported to have taken place some 5
decades ago...
In his book's Prologue
(p. xii), Mr. Ganor states:
"In my memory of those
years Sugihara stands out as a single light in a sea
of darkness. My family, for various reasons, was
not among the fortunate thousands he helped directly,
but he remained an inspiration to me throughout the
terrible years to come --years spent in the Slabodke
ghetto and in the camps of Dachau."
How more absurd than this, Mr. Ganor's portrayal
could be?
Here we have an 11 years old boy (if we take the
most favorable account, that Mr. Ganor was born
in 1928) who in 1939 was made aware (through allegedly
meeting the Consul or through other unspecified means)
that, in his hometown Kaunas, there was a Japanese
Consul that issued visas for Jews. Notwithstanding
that this Japanese Consul, for unspecified reasons,
was not able to help Mr. Ganor's family in any
way, this "experience" nevertheless for this 11 years
old boy had became, for unknown reasons, "an
inspiration ... throughout the terrible years to come
--years spent in the Slabodke ghetto and in the camps
of Dachau."
Is anybody in his or her normal state of mind
capable of buying this cockamamie?
Do we have any takers...?
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The story of the
alleged meeting of Mr. Ganor with the late
Vice-Consul Sugihara in 1939 in Kaunas,
Lithuania, goes in a nutshell, something like
this:
As the young
Mr. Ganor went to his Aunt's "gourmet"
food store to ask for money to see a movie, a
complete stranger that happened to be in the
store, a Japanese [sic!] with little
or no knowledge of the Lithuanian language
(that is completely
different from the Russian language that the
stranger apparently was able to
understand)***,
offered to the
young Solly Ganor, out of the blue and for no
apparent reason, the money to see the
movie [sic!]. Then, as the story
goes, the young Solly Ganor was so impressed
by that gesture that he invited this complete
stranger (which clearly did not appear to be
Jewish as all appearances pointed towards
being an Oriental) to come at his home with
his wife for Hanukkah [sic!]. That
stranger, who happened to be the Honorable
Vice-Consul of Japan stationed in Lithuania,
accepted --according to the story--
immediately the invitation! [sic!].
We could not help but wonder if there is
anyone, in his or her normal state of mind,
capable of "buying" this absurdity...
Again, do we have
any takers?
Well, perhaps not in
our form of presentation but in Eric Saul's
moving presentation, that could be another
matter... And for those that are curious of
seeing how Mr. Ganor's story sounded
when it was first introduced to the world by
Mr. Saul, see the Exhibit 3,
hereto. And based on that original
implantation, the added colorization and
details that were being supplied by
Mr. Ganor as he "recalled" the meeting
when he was only 10 or 11 years old can be
seen in the Exhibit 4,
hereto. And, finally, in the hands of a
professional writer, that concocted story of
the meeting with Sugihara reached a new level
indeed. (For this, see, Chp. 7,
of Alison Leslie Gold's book
"A Special
Fate -- Chuine Sugihara: Hero of the
Holocaust.")
A moving story indeed, if only could be
true... or as Mr. Ganor put it in
reference to a "Visas For Life" account
(Exhibit 4, ¶13):
"If that is
true, then my life has not been in vain."
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***
Editor's
Note: On March 8, 2004, we
were made aware of a confirmation
from Lithuania (Mr. Simonas Dovidavicius,
Executive Director of the
Sugihara House and Museum,
<geocities.jp/lithuaniasugiharahouse/staff.htm>)
that in fact the late Japanese
Vice-Cousul Sugihara "did not
know Lithuanian at all" and that
for his consular administrative
activities in Lithuania he
undoubtedly used Lithuanian
personnel.
Also,
an extraordinarily important
historic event that is hardly
acknowledged (thanks in large to
the twisted work of Eric Saul)
and confirmed by
Mr. Dovidavicius was the
close "influence" that the Dutch
Vice-Consul Jan Zwartendijk
stationed also in Kaunas,
Lithuania, had on Sugihara.
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Source:
users.pandora.be/amarcord/selys/sugiha01.html
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You
see, racing against time,
Zwartendijk, working
round-the-clock, issued some 2345
"Curaçao visas" for the
stranded Jews in Kaunas. Many
with a "Curaçao visa"
would go then to Sugihara to
request a "transit visa" through
Japan on the way across the
Pacific to Curaçao.
According to
Mr. Dovidavicius, in the
Sugihara House and Museum there
is a record where "Sugihara
called Zwartendijk not to be so
fast because he is not able to
issue so much visas per day." For
true accredited historians and
scholars of the Holocaust, this,
in our considerate view, is quite
a remarkable historic footnote.
For additional insight into
Zwartendijk's paramount role in
saving Jews from Lithuania,
please see this entry from The
Scribe entitled
"Lithuania
Honours a Holocaust
Rescuer."
[Also, please see this
webpage from USHMM,
"POLISH
JEWS IN LITHUANIA: ESCAPE TO
JAPAN."]
It is indeed most regrettable
that Yad Vashem's Department of
the Righteous, under the
leadership of Mr. Mordecai
Paldiel,
relied apparently so heavily on
the bogus "research" supplied by
Mr. Eric Saul. In
Mr. Ganor's book, pursuant
to Mr. Saul's coaching, the
Dutch Consul Zwartendijk is not
even mentioned notwithstanding
the fact that his humanitarian
deeds were at the very least
equal to (and most likely
considerable greater than) that
of Sugihara. Mr. Ganor's
delusive account of History
(where in a blatant and
deliberate way Zwartendijk is
being left out) can be found in
his book (ibidem, Prologue,
p. xii) where it is
stated:
"The
one official who offered the
Jews of Kaunas any hope was
the representative of a
government which shortly
become Germany's strongest
ally. That man was the Consul
of Japan, Chiune Sugihara, who
risked his career, his honor,
perhaps his life, to save more
than six thousand
Jews."
It is perhaps imperative that Yad
Vashem --in the interest of
History and the preservation of
the true memory of the
Holocaust-- to reopen the study
of the Sugihara-Zwartendijk
interconnection and perhaps
rename its Sugihara Forest as the
Sugihara-Zwartendijk Forest. It
should be a call that History
will demand. If we cannot
preserve in an honest way the
past, we will have a difficult
time protecting
the future...
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4.
Following Mr. Ganor's account of "four years in the
ghetto Kovne" followed by his entrance into "the
notorious concentration camp of Dachau,"
(Exhibit 4,
¶1) makes us question where and how he was able to
learn to read and write in "Lithuanian, Russian and
German" as such a curriculum --as far as we know-- was
not in existence in the Kaunas (Kovne) ghetto much less
in "the notorious concentration camp of Dachau." Upon
Mr. Ganor's "graduation" from these hellish places,
we were just wondering how in God's name he could land
working as "an interpreter with the American forces in
Germany." (See, Photo
Caption, top of page.)
For us, all this, respectfully, is incomprehensible and
quite incredulous.
And speaking of Mr. Ganor's "graduation," we were
wondering about this statement that appears as his
first sentence of his January 12, 2004 article
entitled "Conversation in London with Solly
Ganor":
"Somehow I always
had a soft spot for the English. Even as a child in
Lithuania I would read books by Charles Dickens and
Sir Walter Scott and stories about the British
navy."
<http://www.iact.ca/views.php?view_id=982>
[We quite frankly had no idea that those
ghettos and concentration camps that Mr. Ganor
purports to have been incarcerated had such fine
libraries for the prisoners!]
And
speaking of Mr. Ganor's Photo
Caption (top of page)
that states that after the war he "served as an
interpreter with the American forces in Germany"
--this apparently is being contradicted by
Mr. Ganor's other account posted in his book
(ibidem) where in the very last page under the
title "About Solly Ganor" it is stated, and we
quote:
"After his
liberation from the Nazis in 1945, Solly Ganor
decided not to accompany his father to Canada; he
chose instead to go to Palestine and join the fight
for the independence in Israel."
5.
Mr. Ganor's claimed participation in four or five Israeli
wars during the tumultuous existence of the Jewish State
(Exhibit 4, ¶3)
is also questionable because of the age requirements. You
see, by any standards of evaluation, the Israeli Army is
an elite army whose extremely high standards would make
it next to impossible for someone to be an active
participant in so many wars!
6.
Mr. Ganor's claimed position of a Director of a so-called
organization entitled "Dachau Survivor's Association" is
also in question. For starters, notwithstanding our
extensive search, we could not find the existence of such
an organization. Maybe Mr. Ganor would enlighten us on
this referenced organization or on any other subject of
his choosing with verifiable documentation.
7.
Finally, Mr. Ganor's claimed position as a member of the
Directorate of the Foundation of Yad Vashem raises
fundamental questions on the propriety of his association
with that Directorate if that association proves to be
true. You see, for a member of that Directorate to reveal
the stage of the work in progress of a candidate for the
"Righteous Among the Nations" title is highly improper
casting a fundamental doubt on the integrity of that
entire operation. As stated elsewhere,
we could care less of the final outcome of the
Bingham IV
case***
as the entire Yad Vashem's Righteous program under
its current leadership, in our considerate view, must be
rendered suspect.
***NOTE
1:
On
March 7, 2005, Yad Vashem (concurring with our opinion)
rendered its final decision on the Bingham IV case
and, to see that final outcome, please click
in here.
***NOTE
2:
On
May 9, 2005, an additional study on Mr. Ganor's deceit
with respect to his purported connection to the late
Japanese Consul Chiune "Sempo" Sugihara has been posted
by us in
here.
¶¶¶NOTE
3: on January 7, 2008, we posted a Correction
Page
with respect to Solly Ganor's name and the found listing
of his name in the Dachau Register.
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